[perfunctory]

Just looking at one of their sample projects "Clean cooking fuel for refugees"

It says

> Briquettes replace wood burning, a heavy polluting fuel source

> This initative is projected to provide 4,000 refugee households with clean briquettes, saving over 16,000 tons of emissions annually.

Let's do some back-of-the-envelope calculation. 16K ton per 4K refugees means 4t per person per year. I couldn't find data on briquettes efficiency vs wood but let's be generous and say it's twice as efficient. Then the emission before the reduction would be 8t per person per year.

So they are telling me that an average Uganda refugee, from cooking alone, emits almost as much as an average Brit [0]

edit: what am I missing?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous...

[lozenge]

I doubt you're missing anything. "Offsetting" projects are based on hypothetical calculations of how much would be emitted without the project. This is the easiest part to fudge. And if they didn't fudge it, then people would pick cheaper projects or just not buy them at all.

What happens, for example, if refugees decide to keep using wood as well as the free briquettes? It could result in higher emissions (Jevons paradox).

[bb611]

Here's a comparison project by Cooling Effect, which was recommended to me by reasonable skeptical, saavy people at my work: https://www.cooleffect.org/content/project/affordable-cookst...

My guess is this is still highly optimistic, but the project claims are 50% emissions reduction from cooking, which is at least possible.

[Retric]

Wood is considered heavily polluting because the smoke is harmful and it’s generally undergoing incomplete combustion. It’s CO2 footprint is as you guessed a non issue.

https://www.lung.org/our-initiatives/healthy-air/indoor/indo...